Subject: Re: Will Java kill Lisp?
From: Erik Naggum <clerik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/09/07
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme,comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3082621719603636@naggum.no>
* Jamie Zawinski
| Starting any statement with "these kids today" is grumpy-old-man
| thinking. Hackers are hackers. I haven't met too many sixteen year olds
| recently, but the few who have made their way into my office or mailbox
| have lived up to my expectations of what kind of people they would be.
computers, programming languages, and tools have all become vastly more
complex. the focus on appearance in modern software translates to very
time-consuming, manual work for the programmer. there is growing concern
that good, compact code is so much harder to maintain and company loyalty
is so low that managers prefer to hire less educated programmers. there is
more demand on kids to go through formal education and get good grades.
these are changes in the outside world that intelligent kids respond to in
the best way they can. their response is to go for the quick buck and not
to spend time on learning more than to operate bleeding-edge tools that
will be obsolete in a few months. I don't think I'm a grumpy old man, but
I remember that I had time to spend on stuff that had no immediate value to
me, but which were just fun to discover, but from what I see, there appears
to be very little time left for those who don't want to drop out of the
system completely for this kind of exploratory playing.
#\Erik
--
404 You're better off without that file. Trust me.